What do you know about the ej gene? : Rabbit Colours and Genetics

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The more I read about the ej gene the more confused I am.At first it sounded like you could only get harlis with aa, but then I started reading that you need agouti to get harlis. I just had a litter from my lilac self buck (who's father is black harli) and my black tort doe. I ended up with 2 black self, 1 chocolate self, 1 black harli?, 1 chocolate magpie (the father's mother was chinchilla so I guess it was possible) 1 blue harli (?), and a lilac torted harli (?) I've had plenty of self and tort litters in my past, but this ej gene is new to me. Also these are all English angoras.I guess what I'm asking is why are people saying you have to have the agouti gene in with the ej to get harlis. They look pretty harlequin patterned to me, well not perfectly, but they are not self or tort.Anybody with any other knowledge about the ej gene what are your thoughts and experiences with self vs agouti not the best lighting, but the harlis definitely have brindle patterning all over them that's chocolate magpie, right?

The agouti gene is the preferred gene for harlequins, because if a self based harlequin (or tricolor) carries non extension (e - found in torts, oranges, etc), it is likely to be torted (tort shading, esp. on face) which is a dq. Agoutis will have correct coloring even if they are eje

That's strange they aren't showing up for me either. Maybe computers are out to get me after all.

So the agouti cleans up the patterning and gives it more of a... traditional harli look I guess you would say.Once I figure out what's wrong with the photo upload I'll post them.The black harli has a perfect line down the face separating the black and orange.The blue harli has a blue nose and then the split starts on his foreheadThe Choco magpie has a spot of brown under his eye and then a patch of brown above it and of all of them is the least patternedthe lilac harli has a tort face but a very patterned body. Something I thought was interesting is that all of them have the darker part on the left side of their face.

If I was to clean them (well their offspring) I have a broken fawn doe and a gold tipped steel buck (that's agouti from my understanding also, it covers up all the colour except the tips) that would prevent tort.

I also want to say I don't show competitively, I keep the angoras for the fiber to blend with my sheep so I try and have the rabbits and sheep colours match up. I'm trying to understand the colours more to have litters that match up with the sheep colours and not just a pile of cute fluff.

__________ Sat Dec 10, 2016 8:54 pm __________

Turns out the photos are 'too large' so here are some incredibly cropped, chopped, and blurrily photos. I'll have to take new pictures tomorrow to make them fit here. I guess this website can only take 1 mb photos and my phone makes all the photos 1.8 mb. Oh well. The blue has more orange to his body than his face, but I had to cut that out. By adding in the agouti, that evens out the colouring, right?

You can "clean up the color" in two ways. Introduce agouti or breed the kits back the the sire to get ejej rabbits. Once you get ejej rabbits they will no longer be torted regardless of their agouti status. Personally, I would avoid mixing steel with either ej or e. Some steel rabbits that carry ej or e will look solid black even if they are genetically agouti.

You can upload the photos to a photo sharing service like photobucket or even facebook (just make sure the photo is set to public) and share the photo url.

You enclose the photo in the [img] tages. It would look something like this

basil wrote:Thanks, that makes much more sense. The agouti gene seems to play a big role in all of the different E alleles.

I prefer to think of the "E" alleles and the "A" alleles together rather than separately. Once you learn all the combinations of those two genes all the rest are just layered over the top. Plus, it works for all species and IMO makes learning colors much easier.